WASHINGTON — About a year before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Dallas dentist David Alameel was in Afghanistan meeting with the Taliban — part of an unofficial delegation hoping to secure the hand-over of Osama bin Laden.

Now that Alameel is running for the U.S. Senate, that revelation is causing some headaches.

Michael Fjetland, a rival in the Democratic primary, insinuated last week that Alameel had suspicious ties with the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist group that controlled Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion. He tweeted: “What was a Senate candidate doing in Afghanistan the year before 9-11? That’s when Taliban and OBL ran the show.”

Alameel defended his involvement, saying he was trying to use his experience in the region to advance U.S. interests.

Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman then living in Houston, had asked Alameel — a native of Lebanon who became a U.S. citizen in 1976 — to participate in the effort because of his experience in the region and ties to the Clinton administration.

Mohabbat died in 2007. Three years earlier, he penned a memoir about his efforts titled Delivering Osama. News accounts corroborate key details; within weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks, CBS and Newsweek reported on his negotiations with the Taliban.

The memoir mentions Alameel several times.

In February 2000, Mohabbat wrote, he and Alameel traveled to Kabul with several other Americans to meet with Taliban representatives. They discussed a deal: bin Laden in exchange for lifting sanctions and promised U.S. economic investment.

Mohabbat “wanted someone to convince them,” Alameel said in an interview. “He didn’t know how to explain the benefits to them. I was to paint a picture of what would happen if they gave up Osama bin Laden.”

The meeting went well, and the Taliban wanted to keep talking. In October 2000, U.S. officials and Taliban representatives met in Frankfurt, Germany.

Alameel was present for some of these meetings, according to Mohabbat’s book. Receipts provided by Alameel’s campaign show that he paid hotel bills for the U.S. delegation. A State Department memo discusses the Frankfurt meetings, though without mentioning him.

Negotiations faltered after that and were shelved after the Sept. 11 attacks. Two months later, U.S. forces toppled the Taliban.

Alameel said he hasn’t mentioned his efforts publicly because he wasn’t sure which parts of the story were classified.